A Concrete Slide, and Other Measures of Manhood

A gloomy weekday afternoon in Berkeley. Gloomy is on this day good because it means that Tallulah and I have the park to ourselves. Ostensibly we are meant to be playing baseball, but after 10 minutes Tallulah wearies of batting practice and bolts for the swings. But in about three seconds, I can see that it isn’t the swings that interest her chiefly; she has her eye, for the first time in her 5-year-old life, on the Long Concrete Slide.

The Long Concrete Slide in our local park is not just a slide. It is a symbol of an American childhood that was lost when the plaintiff lawyers discovered it. The Long Concrete Slide is possibly the world’s most dangerous piece of public recreational equipment. It runs only 25 yards or so, but at a fantastically steep angle, with a dogleg left and hardly any lip to contain the plummeting flesh. Here, every day, children seated on cardboard sheets attain speeds unknown in most American childhoods. Really, it’s less a slide than a luge. Every child who barrels down the thing seems inches from careening off the side to his doom. Now Tallulah giggles and says, “Daddy, I want to go down the slide.”

“You can’t go down it alone.”

“I don’t want to go down alone. I want to go down with you.”

I recall, vaguely, Tabitha explaining to me that our children must never, under any circumstances, ride The Long Concrete Slide. But that’s a mother’s job: to avoid risk. To protect her offspring, even if it means protecting them too much.

A father’s job is different. A father’s job is to provide his children with as many near-death experiences as possible. To teach his children the joy of irresponsibility. To be the guy, who when the child asks to do something she really should not do, shouts, “Yes!”

As we climb the steps to the top of the slide, we both know we’re doing something we should not. With illicit giggles we find a slice of cardboard big enough to hold us both. Then Tallulah hops on my lap, and we’re off. Halfway down we’re cracking up, a rocket ship reentering the Earth’s atmosphere at a bad angle.

The slide was well-designed for a 60-pound child, but not for a 220-pound unstable combination of man and child. As we hit the dogleg, Tallulah tumbles off my lap, and the only way to keep her safe is to brake, and the only way to brake is to lean onto my side. The concrete shears the skin off my left forearm and busts my wristwatch. We get to the bottom with blood running down my arm and Tallulah beaming. “That was fun!”

An hour later we’re innocently eating our dinner. Then I reach for the butter and Tabitha gasps, “What happened to your arm?”

Tallulah shouts: “It’s a secret! Don’t tell Mama!” This, of course, only makes it worse when I do.

At dinner with our friend Bertis Downs, who is visiting Berkeley with the band he manages, R.E.M. When men over 40 dine together, it’s only a matter of time before they come to their medical problems. Tabitha mentions my recent false brush with prostate cancer and, after two glasses of Montelpuciana D’Abruzzi and seven days of lying, I can no longer remain silent. “The prostate cancer wasn’t the worst thing that happened in the doctor’s office,” I say, referring to another matter I discovered when I sneaked a peak into the manila folder containing my entire medical history -- right back to circumcision -- at my doctor’s office.

I lean across the table -- the restaurant is loud; I do not care to be. “I was born with a very small penis.”

Thus, apart from my wife, a man named Bertis is the first to know the dark secret inside my medical records. He, of course, finds it much funnier that he should. No doubt he will soon be telling his friends in R.E.M., who can then write a song about it. But Tabitha is more empathetic.

When Bertis leaves for his rock concert, and we are alone, she looks at me longingly and smiles lovingly. I know what she is going to say before I can stop her from saying it, and I also know she is going to say it loudly enough that the people on either of side of us will have something to tell their friends about tomorrow.

“Honey,” she says, “I really don’t think you have a small penis.”